Joshua Aronson – författare

Social psychological research has revealed much about how personal and interpersonal factors impact academic achievement. The research has been reported in several different outlets but has never before been condensed in an easy to read, engaging book, targeting the hot topics of coffee table debates. This book does just that, offering review chapters by the most influential researchers of today, written for an audience of educational and cognitive psychologists as well as school administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents. Section one focuses on what motivates students, how self-esteem affects the learning process, the consequences of achievement goals, the effects of student attributions of success and failure, self-handicapping, methods of strategic learning, and how to successfully use one's intelligence. Section two discusses how the offering of rewards may affect achievement, how teacher expectations may affect student performance, the effects of stereotypes, feedback, and social rejection. There's also a discussion of effective means of turning at-risk students into scholars, and how students can successfully traverse transitions to middle school.

Elliot Aronson is among the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th Century. He is best known for his theorizing and research on cognitive dissonance theory -- one of the most provocative and enduring theories in contemporary psychology -- and for his design of the "jigsaw classroom," an applied method of reducing conflict and prejudice in multiethnic schools. Throughout his illustrious career, he has championed the application of social-psychological theory and methods for solving such pressing social problems as prejudice, energy efficiency, conflict and miscommunication in relationships, and the reasons why many people justify their mistakes rather than learn from them. Aronson is the only psychologist in the history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its top awards: for research, teaching, and writing. In this Festschrift, friends, colleagues, and former students write with warmth, clarity, and humor about Aronson’s enduring influence on the field of social psychology and on their own professional lives as researchers, writers, and teachers. Topics covered include contemporary research on cognitive dissonance theory; the changing face of experimentation in social psychology; and applied research on energy policy, education, the legal system, intergroup conflict, and prejudice and discrimination.